How Important Were Other Fronts?

If the Western Front was the heart of the war, it was not the whole of it. Out at sea the world's two greatest navies circled each other warily, while German submarines tried to starve Britain into surrender. In 1915 the Allies gambled on a bold landing at Gallipoli to knock the Ottomans out of the war. Far to the east, Russia and Germany fought across vast open spaces, and behind every front civilians felt the war's grip tighten. Did any of these fronts change the outcome, or were they sideshows to the deadlock in France?

This lesson examines the war at sea, the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, the fighting on the Eastern Front and the impact of the war on civilian populations. For each you will learn what happened and, more importantly, how to judge its significance, so you can argue how far these other fronts really mattered against the central struggle on the Western Front.